A simple answer to marital strain was offered yesterday by the latest snapshot of Britain's social life - move to Sevenoaks in Kent or the Lancashire railway junction of Carnforth.

Both communities, along with seaside Mablethorpe in Lincolnshire and the Dorset town of Wimborne, head the list of places where couples stick together more firmly than anywhere else.

Carnforth was narrowly pipped for top prize by Sevenoaks, a wealthy commuter dormitory for London. The railway station is familiar to millions as the setting of the 1946 film Brief Encounter, an early and classy success at bringing temptation and infidelity into mass culture.

The list of comfy centres of wedded bliss is separated by a startlingly wide chasm from Britain's most divorce-prone towns, which include Birkenhead on the Wirral, the London borough of Barking, and St Leonard's-on-Sea in Sussex.

A spokeswoman for Claritas, the consumer survey group which organised the study, said: "If you live in Birkenhead, you can improve your chances of staying together by a massive 340% if you move to Sevenoaks." In Birkenhead, the divorce rate is 28.8% against 6.5% in the Kentish suburbs. In Mablethorpe it is 8.9%, against St Leonard's (27.4%).

The West Midlands is impressively loyal - 12 of the 50 towns with the lowest divorce rates - while Scotland, with only Inverurie in the bottom 50, goes the other way. The data sample was anything but skimpy: the study of 507 towns involved 906,179 responses to the National Shoppers' Survey.

Affluence was credited by Claritas with some influence on divorce rates, with money providing an obvious cushion for stress and tension. But the most settled towns include several modest winners like Carnforth and Wigton in Cumbria, while well-off areas are equally well-represented in the 20%-and-over list.

Analysts pointed out that low divorce rates might be indicators of stricter traditions within communities, as much as of joy in every home. Paula Hall, of the relationship counselling service Relate, said: "They don't necessarily mean a town brimming with couples who are happily married.

"There is an enormous amount of stigma still associated with divorce in certain religious, ethnic and even professional groups that deter couples from splitting up despite what may be going on behind closed doors."

Domestic rates

UK's lowest divorce/separation rates

1 Sevenoaks, Kent, 6.5%

2 Carnforth, Lancashire, 8.2%

3 Wimborne, Dorset, 8.6%

4 Mablethorpe, Lincs, 8.9%

5 Wigton, Cumbria, 9.3%

6 Caldicot, Mon, 9.5%

7 St Ives, Cornwall, 9.5%

8 Sutton Coldfield, West Midlands, 9.7%

9 Whitstable, Kent, 9.7%

10 Hinckley, Leics, 9.8%

UK's highest divorce/separation rates

1 Birkenhead, Lancs, 28.8%

2 St Leonards-on-Sea, East Sussex, 24.7%

3 Barking, east London, 24%

4 Folkestone, Kent, 23%

5 Central London, 22.9%

6 Margate, Kent, 22.4%

7 Wallasey, Merseyside, 21.8%

8 Shipley, Yorkshire, 21.5%

9 Peterlee, Durham, 21.2%

10 Penarth, Glamorgan, 21.1%

The following correction was printed in the Guardian's Corrections and Clarifications, Thursday December 5, 2002We touched a nerve when we located Birkenhead in Lancashire in the table above. It was in Cheshire but now comes under the Metropolitan Borough of Wirral. The postal address is Birkenhead, Wirral, Merseyside.